


Botany

by Flora (florahart)



Category: Eight Cousins Series - Louisa May Alcott
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-20
Updated: 2007-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 08:27:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1641434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/florahart/pseuds/Flora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of 200-word storylets in which Mac thinks about Rose; my apologies for the failure to much extend the canon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Botany

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Moe Machina

 

 

The sound of the two of them above, the occasional shriek and less frequent high prattle and constant gentle low murmur of Rose explaining, patiently because she rarely loses her hold on patience, is so comfortable Mac thinks he could sit here in the worn wing chair and fall asleep. She soothes him--Rose, of course; Dulcinea is as yet an unknown quantity in his life--and for a moment he considers moving to the couch, catching up a book because it will remind him of a time now years gone when he spent long days of headache and blue spectacles listening to her read on topics that didn't a bit hold her interest.

He leans, instead, forward, his elbows on his knees, and considers his poorly-darned sock, uneven and rough against his ankle. Well-dressed is another of the many things he is not though that, at least, he could resolve by means of money.

It's not long for the child to come down the stairs in her ill-fitting gown and too-tight apron. He hardly notices her; Rose is watching her and Mac is watching Rose.

It isn't until the child speaks to him that he realizes he's staring. Again.

.  
.  
.

It's just the headache, he'd told her, hearing the dreadful distortion in his voice where his throat was hot and thick and the hollow places in his skull were heavy and full. He ignored this distortion because he _wasn't_ crying, and there was nothing to be done for his condition but wait.

She'd set the book down, and even in his state he could see how carefully she noted the page before putting a hand to his brow, cool and soothing as water, fingers lingering on his skin for a moment. It was all he could do to keep all that heat and fullness inside his head long enough to roll miserably away.

She's paused for a moment, then picked up the book and begun again. _Her_ voice was clear and constant, even as she read about the diverse fauna of the Amazon, and he let out a breath of relief; he couldn't bear that she might leave, for reasons he couldn't put in order even in his head, but he also couldn't stand for her to see him cry. He was glad she was so easy to fool, because surely the horrid tears would drip no matter his opinion.

.  
.  
.

She'd remained behind, sending Phebe back in her stead.

Mac watched all the cousins wail and groan because she'd ruined it, and it wasn't as though he didn't feel that way himself, but in another place in his chest, somehow, beside the place that felt hurt and angry, there was something else. It puzzled him, so he set it aside and lay to on the work that remained. Rose wanted Phebe to have a good time; so they would show her one. Phebe thought they were all quite mad; she could hardly contain her need to take care of them despite her efforts, for Rose's sake.

He'd never thought about Phebe before, and he'd never considered that he'd never thought about her, either. Watching her, so thrilled by every little thing, he concluded Rose knew things he didn't. He wasn't sure why, because with all the boys he took no small amount of pride in reading everything and knowing what they didn't, but it made him glad.

It wasn't until a long while later that he realized the place in his chest was hours, maybe years, ahead of the rest of him.

The feeling stayed with him a long time.

.  
.  
.

His stitching, he acknowledged with a groan, was dreadful.

Ordinarily he might have asked Rose to show him, or help him get it straight, but she was still away, due back this afternoon. She'd have shaken her head and done it for him, though, lips quirking in amusement. He didn't wish to amuse her. He wanted to appear competent and confident and as someone she saw, not as Mac in his funny glasses, but as Mac, full-grown. There were many things he knew and could do, but he was still just Mac.

He looked at the seam in his hands, scowling, and worked his way back, unpicking bits of unruly thread. Usually, he wouldn't have cared; clothes were never the measure of this man, and he'd always known he'd never cut so fine a figure as Steve or be so comfortable with himself as Charlie, so he wore what came to hand and ignored the awkwardness of his lanky legs and too-thin shoulders.

Now, he just wanted to look presentable.

With a sigh, he arranged the edges and rethreaded the needle to try again. At least it wasn't darning. Or tatting. That he never needed lace was fortunate for everyone.

.  
.  
.

He wasn't writing poetry, precisely. He'd practiced convincing himself of this despite that he ought never to lie, because eventually, Rose would ask about it. She noticed things, whether she meant to or not, and Mac knew he wasn't a natural poet.

He enjoyed the poetry he read, considering each word for the images and sounds associated with it; he also enjoyed his poor efforts to replicate the patterns and structures he'd observed. That he was too much a scientist to do it well didn't alter that. However, if he was going to be a bad poet, he didn't want to be a silly one, because when she did notice, he wouldn't be able to stand for her to think him silly, so he took his careful time about it, striving for words which held nothing of the dry precision of the philosophers she's once read to him, yet kept clear of ridiculous overblown fancy.

When she read his little book, many months after he first hesitantly put pen to page, he couldn't help but observe, carefully neutral and surreptitious. Her face lit up, and he decided that if she thought him a poet, then he certainly should be one.

.  
.  
.

She'd begged him not to leave, and it was very bad of him--a phrase he'd acquired from her over the years; even as he thought it, it called up an image of her saying it of herself, long before when she'd still been learning to follow Uncle's prescriptions about exercise and practical clothes. That image made him feel incongruously better, and that she needed him now, while Charlie lay dying under Uncle's care, for all they pretended he might live, warmed him. It was awful to consider, but true.

He let her direct him, answering her questions when she asked and closing his eyes for a little while despite the certainty he wouldn't sleep, because it meant that he stayed. There was nothing to be done about Charlie, whose fate held no regard for their wishes, and they'd a great deal of history helping each other with troubles, so he pretended it was for her sake that he stayed. That was very bad of him, too.

The space between his eyes was heavy and tight when she followed him back. Once again, she sat beside a couch, offering comfort, and once again, Mac turned away, unable to face her.

.  
.  
.

Dulcinea lifts her hands to him, calling him her 'Mat,' and he picks her up, asking after her Rose. She grins, fat baby cheeks rounding up to her eyes, and says that Rose is waiting. Mac nods gravely, and says that so is he, and Dulce frowns, puzzled that both are waiting and neither moving. Her solution to her confusion, as ever, is to dismiss it with an ease Mac envies, and attempt to grab his glasses.

He laughs, and hands her off to Auntie, then straightens his jacket and makes one last attempt to quell his nerves. The tremble of his hands suggests it isn't working.

They've settled, to the surprise of none but the dismay of a number of Rose's friends, on a simple ceremony, which, true to the chaos that's always characterized their clan, is interrupted twice by Dulce and once by Aunt Clara's unintentional sob. At the end, Mac can't recall a word of it.

Neither, Rose confesses, as they get into the carriage that will take them away, can she.

He wonders, as they start on their journey, whether he ever will recall the details, then laughs at himself. It's not important; he has Rose.

 


End file.
